Orthotic foot braces, worn within the shoe, are utilized by podiatrists and related health care providers for post operative and corrective treatment of the foot. Such orthotic foot braces include podiatric appliances that independently attach to therapeutic insoles. This arrangement of insole and podiatric appliance is advantageous and cost effective in that it obviates the necessity of custom made orthopedic shoes.
Conventionally, the podiatrist or other health care provider indicates the name of each of the appliances to be used, its measurements, and an insole size or number on each prescription given to the patient. The associated prescribed insole and appliances are then purchased by the patient at a drug store or dealership. U.S. Pat. No. 4,603,698, issued to Jaime Guttman Cherniak (the inventor herein) on Aug. 4, 1986, provides a system in which podiatric appliances are securable to an insole by provision of small U shaped wires. The insole of Cherniak is provided with a tangible grid of hole-like mounting sites, extending in a uniform, predetermined pattern. The insoles, which come in a range of sizes, can have applied indicia, contrasting coloration or can be utilized with a graph paper template in the nature of a prescription, so that each of the mounting sites can be assigned a unique address. The purpose of this is to allow the podiatric appliance to be attached to mounting sites that are prescribed by the health care provider. A problem arises, even in the system described in the Cherniak patent, in that the outline of an injured or malformed foot can lie between insole sizes. As such, it is sometimes impossible for the health care provider to prescribe an insole to fit the patient. Moreover, since a malformed foot can deform a shoe, even when an appropriate base plate size can be selected, the selected insole can be too large to fit within the shoe in the first instance. In order to alleviate the problems associated with insoles incorporating attachable podiatric appliances, the present invention provides an insole formed from a base plate that can be cut to the outline of the foot. The base plate has an inscribed graph on one of its surfaces. The podiatrist can use the coordinates of the graph to easily prescribe to the patient the proper placement of the podiatric appliance. Since the podiatrist appliances must often be moved after an initial wearing period, the podiatrist can convey the change of the location of the podiatric appliance by simply conveying to the patient the coordinates for the reinstallation of the podiatric appliance. An additional advantage of the base plate of the present invention is that, since the base plate is cut to the exact size of the foot, individual base plates do not have to be manufactured and prescribed.